laughed and chatted
with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable Nellie
Bond herself down to those who may be designated as camp-followers. Rolfe,
as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his
associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an
illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the
boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies
across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly
frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically
transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan,
exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, while
Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French fried
potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he addressed as
"comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails.

"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared.

But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, and
while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain
misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had
sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was
struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the
strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in
the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, noting
the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though seeking to
wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it down and
lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a religion that
had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no disciplines. He threw
it out in snatches, this religion, while relating the histories of
certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, letting fall a hint
to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond were dwelling together
in more than amity.

"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly.

Rolfe laughed.

"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property?
It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in
bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of
God."

"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God
they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had
t